The Database and the Fogg Museum

In addition to marking a shift in academic approaches, the integration of Perseus into the Fogg also indicates an increasing centrality for computers in Harvard museums. The Social Context of Greek Art marks the first time the Fogg has used computers in an exhibit. According to University Art Museums Deputy Director Frances A. Beane, it is "an innovation whose time has come," and it has met with no resistance from the Fogg.

The computerization effort is part of a move by Harvard Art Museums to involve students and the public with the museums and their collections. At present, Beane and other museum directors are negotiating with several technology companies to fund a computers network system that will allow Harvard to establish a computerized archive of the University's collections. Harvard's prints, paintings and other works of art number some 120,000 objects.

Such a system--expected to be purchased and introduced into the museums some time in the next year--will allow a student researching a particular theme or artist to see photographs of relevant works in storage. This system, increasingly used in museums like the National Gallery, will contain relevant acquisition information and historical background and will include mechanisms for zooming-in and for revealing the scale of the object.

Beane sees the main goal as ultimately creating a kind of "electronic bulletin board where we could have scholarly discourse about items in the collection." At the same time, the system would more fully integrate the museum into the day to day teaching in the University, with a Hollis-like system as the final goal.

Beane recognizes that the time-scheme for all of this will be several years. Thus, after the system is purchased, the Fogg will seek student and faculty input to determine the specific functions that the system would include.

One noteworthy point: Beane very much wants the computer to remain only a means to an end--students must still look at the original work. Thus, Beane and other museum directors will not want the picture quality to be "too good." Further, the viewer should always realize the potential for computers to pick up details beyond the human eye because it [the art] is just too small."

Finally, Beane regards the database as central to the museum's aim to make art more accessible to the public. Beane believes that the database gives the viewer as much or as little background information as he or she wants. The, historical and etymological powers of the system, now made so accessible to the viewer, can be explored to the extent that the viewer chooses.

Academic Populism

Although the Fogg show marks Perseus's completion as a database, Crane plans to expand beyond Harvard. Perseus has been published by Yale University Press, and will be marketed shortly. While Crane recognizes that Perseus will not be widely distributed for a while, he is encouraged by the enthusiastic response from other universities and high schools.

Crane is particularly happy at the response from the latter, and continues to introduce Perseus to that audience. Dozens of high schools already have test copies, and next month Crane will address a conference for this purpose.

He attributes this success to the database's open-ended possibilities for creativity and exploration, rather than its maintenance of academic dogma, both in method and content. Crane believes that most students are "sick of text books and canned answer."

Crane sees Perseus's potential accessibility as the core of his "populist and staunchly democratic ideal," something he regrets not seeing more of at Harvard. He feels that the current reality of academics only writing for academics is "not viable." "We need in the Humanities to engage the imagination and intelligence of people outside our field. We need to get the populace to have discipline and skepticism."

He sees Ken Burns's recent Civil War television series, and its enthusiastic response, as the beginnings of higher public involvement in formerly scholarly pursuits. Rather than spending all of their time passively watching, the public--with some combination of video and computer--could potentially spend "[thirty minutes] watching, and [ninety minutes] browsing for information." Crane's computer database combines the "popular and the scholarly."

Unfortunately, Crane realizes that most of the Harvard community "assumes that most normal people aren't going to do this. "However, he knows that an interaction with the public is essential: "Nobody is going to support us for very long if they perceive us as caring for nothing but ourselves. Social scientists and natural scientists address key problems like how to maintain the economy and how to stop AIDS...we have to address ideas that resonate with in the population and provide intellectual leadership."

At present, Crane sees that Harvard perpetuates this problem. "Institutionally, Harvard does not provide enough incentives for faculty to set their work and ideas in a wider context. In many disciplines, there is no incentive but to write for other specialists." As a result, there is a "disproportionate share of the brightest minds not being directed at the most seminal problems."